By COLlive reporter
The village of Bal Harbour, the wealthy seaside suburb of Miami Beach, Florida, has elected attorney and Jewish activist Gabe Groisman as its new Mayor on Monday, November 21, 2016.
As a councilman, Groisman wrote the nation’s first municipal anti-BDS ordinance to fend off anti-Israel motions and urged Congress to condemn UNESCO’s “libelous” resolution, denying Jewish connection to Jerusalem.
His election was a far cry from past attitudes towards Jews in Bal Harbour, home to carefully designed homes for upscale residential living and luxury tourism and shopping.
Rabbi Sholom Ber Lipskar, founder and spiritual leader of The Shul of Bal Harbour, recalls moving to South Florida in the late 1960s and finding few Jews in the area.
When he founded his famous congregation in 1981 as a Chabad Shliach, there was a lot of blatant anti-Semitism, he told the Miami Herald. “In 1981, we were not the most welcome guys on the block. This community was not used to a Jewish presence.”
Rabbi Lipskar told the Herald that real-estate agents would not deal with him, eggs were thrown at his house, his son was told that he could not play in a certain area and he heard anti-Semitic remarks.
In December 12, 1982, the Bal Harbour Club dropped a 36-year-old policy barring Jews and blacks from this exclusive seaside community, according to a report in the New York Times.
Today, The Shul is expanding to include 40,000 square-feet of new buildings not including on-site parking facilities at the cost of $20 million. It was listed by Newsweek magazine as one of America’s 25 most vibrant Jewish congregations in 2009.
The Shul has 700 family memberships representing about 3,000 people. According to the shul website, they have over 78 programs, including adult education, programming for Latin-American Jewry, Holocaust survivors and more.
Rabbi Lipskar was on-hand on Monday to swear-in Groisman. “I’m so honored to have been sworn in this morning as the new Mayor of Bal Harbour!” Groisman wrote on Facebook. “Looking forward to serving!”
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